Tag Archives: Prabowo Subianto

With local elections, 2018, mostly done and dusted, eyes are now turned to presidential and general elections, 2019. The 2019 elections in Indonesia will be the first to be see concurrent legislative and presidential elections since direct elections for the presidency was instituted in 2004. The Constitutional Court ruled in 2014 that sequential timing of these legislative and presidential elections was unconstitutional; notwithstanding, on July 20, 2017, the House passed the bill to maintain party thresholds for nomination of presidential candidates; the new law, which mostly follows the previous law, stipulates that only parties or coalitions with at least 20 percent of the seats in the legislature or 25 percent of the popular vote are able to nominate presidential candidate. To account for the concurrent elections, the new law bases the threshold on the outcome of the 2014 legislative elections, which effectively sets the stage for a rematch between the 2014 presidential contestants, Prabowo Subianto, former general and current chair of the Gerindra Party, and President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo. In the following, I trace political alliances since the 2014 presidential elections to show how the political chips are aligning ahead of the 2019 elections.

The 2014 legislative elections saw 10 parties elected into the lower house of the bicameral legislature. The results for that election were surprising in at least one aspect: no parties achieved the level of popular support needed to run independently for the presidential election in July.[1] Given the nomination threshold, intense jockeying proceeded; these became more heated with contentious challenges against the initial quickcount results following the presidential elections in July 2014.[2] By the time of the presidential inauguration in October, the lines were drawn: as Table 1 below shows, three parties fell into the President’s coalition, the Awesome coalition, while six parties that formed a majority comprised the opposition coalition, the Red-and-White coalition. In the course of year after the presidential election, the Red-and-White coalition posed some real impediments to the president’s agenda; at the same time, however, political parties started to peel away from the opposition coalition. By January 2016, only two parties remained in the Red-and-White opposition coalition: the Gerindra Party and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS); meanwhile, the President’s coalition had grown from a minority of 207 seats to a majority of 386 seats.

Table 1: Indonesian Parties in the Legislature and allegiances between 2014 and 2018

As the world’s third largest democracy, and a country with the largest Muslim population in the world, many will undoubtedly be intently watching the local elections in 2018, and general elections in 2019, to see how Indonesia fares amid stalling democratization and even reversals in East and Southeast Asia.

Like most emergent democracies, Indonesia saw a proliferation of political parties and interest groups following democratization even as the country was restructuring its representative institutions, the House of Representatives (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat, DPR), and the People’s Representatives Council (Dewan Perwakilan Daerah, DPD), into fully elected ones. To control the surge of candidates and parties standing for elections and the subsequent legislative fragmentation, Presidential Election Law, Law No. 42/2008, was passed in 2008 to govern the nomination and election of presidential candidates, while Election Law No. 8, was passed in 2012, to regulate how political parties may stand for legislative elections. Thus, the constraints of Election Law No. 8 included limiting political parties that may contest elections to only those who obtained a threshold of 3.5 percent of the national votes from the previous election.[1]

The Presidential Election Law was challenged at the Constitutional Court in 2013, on the grounds that the Presidential Election law encouraged horse-trading among political parties rather than foster the discipline that underpins responsive or responsible policymaking. If the 2014 elections are any guide, that assessment is not far off-base. Specifically, no parties in the April legislative elections achieved the level of popular support needed to field independently a nominee for the presidential election in July, and that is with a highly popular candidate, then-governor Joko “Jokowi” Widodo. Then-governor Jokowi was so popular that legislative candidates from other political parties used ads featuring the governor.

The resultant legislative results, then, took many by surprise: although the “Jokowi” factor kept the then-governor’s party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), in the lead, it captured only 19 percent of the popular vote, well short of expectations. It meant that the PDI-P needed to form a coalition with partners in order to nominate a presidential candidate for the July elections, as would others. Unsurprisingly, the political jockeying for coalition-partners and the winnable president-vice president team began even before official results were announced. Two nominees emerged: Jokowi and Prabowo Subianto. Jokowi would go on to win the presidential elections, but that win did not stall the opposition coalition.

President Jokowi has kept a firm majority in the legislature since, so that it is probably not surprising that he championed the proposal to maintain the thresholds. Prabowo Subianto has also maintained a firm interest in politics, and he advocated for the elimination of nomination thresholds. Prabowo and his Gerindra Party have played a decisive – and ultimately victorious – role in the recent gubernatorial election in the capital city of Jakarta, and he is widely expected to use that win as springboard for a 2019 presidential run.

With the thresholds in place, minor party candidates definitely have their work cut out for them. Threshold or not, Jokowi and Prabowo look set to compete again for the presidency in 2019.

Elections in the capital cities of Asia are often seen as bellwethers for national elections, and elections in Jakarta, Indonesia, are no exception. Still, there is reason to consider the 2017 gubernatorial elections in Jakarta as deserving of particular attention. For one, the incumbent candidate, Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, was a highly popular governor who took over the mantle from a highly popular predecessor, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, when the latter won the presidential elections in 2014. Both men are considered to break political traditions, so that their respective popularities underpinned hope for wide support of political change. The electoral defeat of Ahok, then, by former education minister, Anies Baswedan, may have dimmed those hopes. In the following, I discuss how this gubernatorial election may foreshadow politics and the 2019 presidential elections in Indonesia.

The General Election Commission (KPU) announced recently that the need for the revotes in over 1000 polling stations may delay the official results for the legislative elections, held April 9, 2014, original pegged for May 9. Nevertheless, even without the official results, political jockeying between the parties for coalition-partners and the winnable president-vice president team has commenced, and these may be as intense as the finger-pointing and blame-game that has taken place following the quick count results.

What coalitions are possible and which improbable? Coalitions are necessary given that the quick-count results show none of the parties has received the requisite 25 percent of the national vote or 20 percent of the parliamentary seats to field independently a presidential candidate for the July elections. The top three vote-getters based on the quick-count results are the PDI-P, Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, leading with about 19 percent of the popular vote; Golkar with 14.9 percent; and Gerindra with 12 percent. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party edged into the double-digit league with 10 percent of the votes.

The top three parties have all announced their presidential candidates:

Jakarta governor, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo for the PDI-P;

Aburizal Bakrie, business tycoon, for Golkar, the leading party of the Suharto era;

Prabowo Subianto, former military lieutenant-general, for Gerindra

Coalition-partners, then, are angling for vice-presidential nomination or cabinet positions.

Still, the PDI-P was the first to announce a coalition with NasDem, the National Democrat Party, founded by former Golkar Party member and media mogul Surya Paloh. NasDem is the only new party to be sanctioned by the General Election Commission (KPU) to contest the national elections and received 6.6 percent of the popular vote. NasDem favors former Vice President and Golkar Party member, Jusuf Kolla, as the vice-presidential nominee on the PDI-P coalition ticket, but Jokowi has maintained that nominations and cabinet posts will not be traded for coalition support. With NasDem’s support, PDI-P has passed the threshold for the nomination. Since the coalition with NasDem, the PDI-P has announced a coalition deal with the National Awakening Party, the PKB, founded by former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid, although the family of “Gus Dur” has severed ties with the PKB. Talks are reportedly ongoing with another potential coalition partner, the United Development Party (PPP).